Re-Thinking, Re-Focusing and Re-Energising how we Lead Innovation and Manage Design

Designing 'things' to become platforms is a very risky occupation. It is better to design tools that help people 'get things done'. If in the process of helping the end-user, the end-user themselves point out by their emergent behaviour that we can build upon our tool and it becomes a platform that is fantastic... both for us and the end-user. Did Steve Jobs work out how the iPod would impact the media ecosystem or did he try to provide tools that I'm sure he knew if he got it right things would never be the same again, but he would not have a plan set in concrete (a platform?) but rather an iterative view of how it would all unfold.It is the linking of business strategy to design activity that has ensured that Apple "Lead Innovation and manage design" in a way that ensures strong sustainable growth for all the stakeholders in the Apple vision. Unlike Microsoft Business and Design seem to have become great friends rather than remain strangers.... Tool users like to extend the possibilities for their tools by talking about their experiences with other tool users. In the Middle Ages this gave rise to Guilds; in the enlightenment Coffee Houses (Lloyd's, for example) were where information exchange and knowledge making happened... something similar is happening with Apple-users... Business Week talks of the Mac in a grey flannel suit as the "Apple-core" put pressure on their IT providers. BW reports:

"Soon after Michele Goins became chief information officer at Juniper Networks (JNPR)
in February, she decided to respond to the growing chorus of Mac lovers
among the networking company's 6,100 employees. For years, many had
used Apple's (AAPL) computers at home and clamoured for them in the office as well

So she launched a test, letting 600 Juniper staffers use Macs instead of the standard-issue PCs that run Microsoft's (MSFT)
Windows operating system. As long as the extra support costs aren't too
high, she plans to open the floodgates. "If we opened it up today, I
think 25% of our employees would choose Macs," she says.

Funny thing is, she has never received a single sales call from
Apple. While thousands of other companies scratch and claw for the
tiniest sliver of the corporate computing market, Apple treats this
vast market with utter indifference. After a series of failed
offensives by the company in the 1980s and 1990s, Chief Executive Steve
Jobs decided to focus squarely on consumers and education customers
when he returned to Apple in 1997. As a result, the company doesn't
have ranks of corporate salespeople or armies of repairmen waiting to
respond every time a hard drive fails. Nothing that could divert his
minions from staying focused on Apple's core calling: creating the next
cool thing for the world's consumers."

So Mac-users/fans have become a platform for the growth of Apple corporate sales... try planning and executing that as a strategy! Surreal isn't it?

The Mail on Sunday included an article We have lift off: The quickest yacht in the world. Extract here:Is it a boat? is it a plane? No - it's something in between, that also happens to be very, very fast. Ian Stafford goes flying on the quickest yacht in the world "This is not a boat, nor a plane either. This is a magical flying carpet,2 says Alain Thébault, the man behind the Hydroptère, the world's fastest yacht. There's magic in the air even as we cast off from the Breton port of La Trinité-sur-Mer, overlooked by the ancient stones of Carnac, France's own Stonehenge. There's a flurry of strenuous hoisting and winding as the wind balloons the sails. The craft begins to accelerate. It cuts the waves faster and faster, the nose begins to lift… and then we're flying. It just keeps on going faster. The only sound from the sea beneath is the single hydrofoil blade cutting through the waves like a sword. Its far end shimmers underwater; thunderclouds of spray fill the air in its wake. Hydroptère throws up more water than a hundred jet-skis, but in total silence – except when the crew whoop for joy. This extraordinary trimaran is the result of 20 years of research, engineering and design, plus substantial backing from Swiss banker Thierry Lombard. It's a yacht made from carbon fibre and titanium that rises up on to "wings". Instead of ploughing through the waves, it glides over them. Once up to speed, only one of two hydrofoils at the end of each outer keel actually touches the sea. The drag is almost negligible. This is why it has already set two world speed records, over a nautical mile and 500m, and why it'll continue to redefine yachting speeds as we know them this summer. Watch out for the reports.and the article endsHydroptère is a personal obsession, a life's work born of one man's dream – but now that it's on the verge of breaking every record that matters, there are plenty of potential buyers. Does Thébault know how much the project has cost? "No," he replies. "With all the adjustments and innovations it's very difficult to say. I'd say many millions of euros." Would he ever sell? "We have had a few people approach us, but I have not even waited for a price, nor offered one, and discussions never take place." Why not? Thébault smiles and lets out another whoop of joy as Hydroptère nudges past 40 knots again and the Quiberon peninsula flashes by. "There are some things in life no amount of money can ever buy," he explains, with a broad grin. "You cannot put a price on living a dream."

If we refer to Maslow we can see that the yacht is all about the satisfaction of Alain Thébault's need for self-actualisation. He is incredibly fortunate to have, since 2006, sponsorship from Swiss banker Thierry Lombard. As the official site puts it

Born in 1962, under the sign of Virgo, half-mad or half-wise depending on the tides, Alain Thébault once had a dream: creating a flying boat.
In the sailing world, there are many Ulysses. Sailors are cunning people who know how to make it through the tempest and to use a bit of cunning with the technical and human elements in order to survive. But Alain Thébault is the only living Icarus among the oceanic skippers. He possesses a fever for invention, a scorn for danger and the need to burn himself under every sun. The skipper of l’Hydroptère, the “flying boat”, is a misunderstood person who likes nothing better than rile the crowds who doubt him. He is also a determined man who would fall 10 times and get back up 100 times. Finally, he is an agitator who has burnt his wings many times by provoking the anger in the political and business spheres. Pilote d’un rêve (Piloting a Dream), Alain Thébault, Flammarion March 2005, Libération

Maslow can play out at two extremes- a utilitarian view:

“If the only tool we have is a hammer then we tend to see every problem as a nail.”

Or a symbolic one:

“Excellence is the result of

caring more than others think is wise;

risking more than others think is safe;

dreaming more than others think is feasible and expecting more than other people think is possible.”

On the Archive Hour March 29th Robert Peston explored by looking back whether we still have a resentment of the profit motive. In the programme Charles Dunstone talked of his motives for setting up the Carphone Warehouse in the 1980's. He was working at NEC from 87-89 and saw the emergence of the mobile phone as a piece of car equipment. NEC was not a herd company following its rivals and this showed him that he could do things differently, profitably than the mainstream. Our Prime Minister, Maggie Thatcher, was exhorting entrepreneurs to 'get on with it.' Dunstone had an insight that the self-employed and small businesses could be empowered by the mobile phone. Conventional thought at the time stated that "as a mobile cost £3,000 in 1989 (equivalent to £8000 today) the only buyers will be large companies." Dunstone took the view that if he could help the smaller business to exploit them they could afford them... so he set up Carphone Warehouse to retail them direct to the public. He created a fun working environment that was friendly to the customer... he answered the phone "Hello, my name is Charles, how may I help you?" which was totally at odds with the stiff formality that was commonplace at that time. As he put it he zagged when everyone was zigging. This struck a chord... doesn't Marty Neumeier talk about this in Brand Gap?

Neumeier says "The brand gap is the distance between business strategy (what the company wants to be) and customer experience (how people actually perceive it). The brand gap has its origins in the way our brains work. Strategic thinkers favour the left side of the brain (the logic), while creative thinkers favour the right side (the magic). Since these two ways of thinking reside in different people, there's always a gap between brand logic and brand magic."

In Zagbook Neumeier writes that "Differentiation, the art of standing out from the competition is not front-page news. What is front-page news, in a world of extreme clutter, is that you need more than differentiation. You need RADICAL differentiation.

The new rule: when everyone zigs, zag. traditional differentiation is an uphill battle... radical differentiation, on the other hand, is about finding a whole new market space you can own and defend, thereby delivering profits over years instead of months."

We can see how Carphone Warehouse has kept trying to zag over the years, disturbing the land-line and broadband orthodoxies.

As the programme said... "trying to innovate is often derailed by "the voices of smugness and complacency that were against it."